Polar Vortex

Baby It’s Cold Outside:   Earlier this week, Trump once again reminded us of his intellectual limitations and disdain for science by tweeting “In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Warming? Please come back fast, we need you!”  In an attempt to school Trump, the scientists at NOAA slapped back with a tweet of their own reminding him that winter storms don't prove that global warming isn't happening. Given their targeted audience the NOAA crowd included a snappy little cartoon in their tweet.  Perhaps it’s time for Trump’s intelligence officials to resort to a similar strategy. Yesterday, in response to their Senate testimony, testimony that provided a remarkably candid assessment of the risk’s facing the country, one that differed in almost every respect from Trump’s inverted views of who is an enemy and who is a friend, Trump questioned the intellect and capabilities of his handpicked intelligence leaders tweeting that they were “extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong!" and “should go back to school.”  He bragged about his fine relationship with North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un saying its “the best it has ever been,” claiming a “decent chance of denuclearization” despite virtually every expert’s assessment that North Korea believes that maintaining its nuclear arsenal is its best and perhaps only chance of continued survival.  He then went on to laud his “tremendous progress on ISIS,” despite the Intelligence community’s belief that the US remains firmly in their all too devious crosshairs.  In response to his off base and scathing criticism, Senator Schumer suggested that it was Trump who needed tutoring. He sent a letter to Director of National intelligence Dan Coats, calling Trump's criticism of the testimony he and the other intelligence leaders provided to Congress “extraordinarily inappropriate," adding that "it is incumbent on you, (FBI) Director Wray and (CIA) Director Haspel ... to impress upon him how critically important it is for him to join you and the leadership of our Intelligence Community in speaking with a unified and accurate voice about national security threats."  Schumer said that it was time for them to stage an intervention.  Good luck with that, absent a hand from Putin, Trump’s mind is set.

The Russian Front: Yesterday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy finally announced the Republican appointments to the House Intelligence Committee.  With the composition of the committee now set, Chairman Adam Schiff can move forward with his planned vote to authorize the sending of all of last year’s testimony over to Special Counsel Mueller.  McCarthy’s foot dragging has been viewed as an intentional effort on his part to delay future indictments against those Trumpkins who had lied to the committee during their House testimony, one of those likely prevaricators is named Donald Trump Jr. Mueller certainly doesn’t need any more impediments.  Yesterday we learned that the Russians have been waging an internet campaign against his investigation, particularly targeting his credibility. That information came out in a filing concerning Concord Management, a company owned by Russian oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin, also known as Putin’s chef.  Concord is one of the three Russian entities that was accused last February of “masterminding the social media meddling” into the 2016 presidential election.  At the time that Concord was accused, thirteen Russian citizens were also indicted for their role in the interference. After the indictments, Concord took the unusual step of hiring US lawyers from Reed Smith to fight the indictments, unexpected because generally the Russians don’t fight these charges in court, they just evade punishment by remaining outside the reach of US law enforcement.  Yesterday Mueller accused the lawyers from Reed Smith of sharing the documents that they received through their discovery process with some of Prigozhin’s “Russian trolls” who then posted a manipulated version of them online, circulating where they could be found via emails to a few media outlets in an effort to make it appear that Mueller’s server had been hacked, it hasn’t been, and that the basis for his investigation and indictments was questionable.  Mueller has now gone to court to limit Concord’s lawyers access to additional documents and to limit the venue where they can continue their limited discovery.  The judge overseeing the case, Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee who has already called out Concord’s lawyers for some of their other questionable behavior is not expected to be pleased with the lawyer’s involvement in the Russian’s disinformation campaign.  For his part Senator Lindsay Graham who is now the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee has asked FBI Director Wray to justify the amount of forces he used to bring in Trump crony, admitted dirty trickster Roger Stone.  He’s clearly taking a page out of Trump and Stone’s book, to that end Trump who told the Daily Caller yesterday that he’ll let the Department of Justice and his handpicked Attorney General, assuming he is confirmed, decide whether or not Mueller’s eventual report gets released, may ask the FBI to review its policies so that good people like Stone who has frequently touted his gun ownership and shooting prowess, don’t get arrested by armed SWAT teams going forward.

Investment Failure:   Last year to much fanfare, Trump joined with then Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in announcing a major investment in the state by Foxconn, the Chinese technology equipment manufacturer.  To obtain that commitment Walker had made a number of hugely expensive concessions that he justified because of the “huge” number of manufacturing jobs that would be brought to his state.  Over the past year it has become more and more evident that Walker has been duped, that Foxconn, a company with a reputation for overpromising, had no plans to bring as many high end manufacturing jobs as promised.  Yesterday, they announced that they had “changed” their plans, given the cost of producing televisions in the US, they’ve decided to move their manufacturing elsewhere.  They are still bringing a jobs to Wisconsin, but far fewer high paying ones than promised. No word from Trump about how he feels about this, likely because he cares less about the jobs and more about the initial photo op of him lifting a shovel at the ersatz plant groundbreaking.  But then again that’s not all that shocking, he rarely talks truth about the miners who are still waiting for their jobs to reappear.   

2020:  Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and his advisors have been taking the news show circuit by storm.  Schultz continues to talk up his “plan” to consider running for president as an independent and based upon what he’s been saying it’s growing increasingly clear why he’s not all that interested in running as a Democrat.  Schultz is more of an old style New England Republican than a new style progressive Democrat.  His views on social issues are fairly liberal but his views on health care and taxation are out of synch with the new Democratic mainstream, even with some of the more moderate members of the party.  He touts his own personal success in rising from the projects to billionaire status as evidence that anyone who works hard enough can do the same.  He acknowledges that his family benefited from assistance during their hard times, but fails to understand that some of that assistance came from government programs funded by the higher tax rates prevailing during his youth because that doesn’t fit his narrative. Yesterday, a Seattle paper reported that Schultz, who has touted the importance of voting to his baristas isn’t all that politically active himself, his record indicates that he is at best an occasional voter.  Shortly after saying that although he’s donated to many Democratic campaigns but never to Senator Elizabeth Warren, he deleted an insulting tweet he’d resent from his twitter feed, one where he used a Trumpian slur to describe her and another in which he called Senator Kamala Harris shrill. His spokesmen were out on the stump yesterday, defending his decision to run as an independent and promising that he would pull out if his polling indicated that his run would tilt the election to Trump, and they may be right for all the wrong reasons. Given Schultz’s comments and insults, he may be long gone before November 2020, and that wouldn’t be a bad thing.  

Hold That Latte

Risky Business:  While Roger Stone, who has never met a limelight that he doesn’t want to bask in, was front and center yesterday morning, glowing as he strutted into a Washington DC court for his arraignment.  Though there were plenty of “lock him up” guys in the crowd outside the court, the cameras were more focused on Stone’s supporters, a mix of his friends from the Proud Boys, the far right neo-fascist group, and some very white suburban women holding signs calling for the firing and imprisonment of Special Counsel Mueller and Hillary Clinton, because when all else fails the rabidly pro-Trump crowd always goes back to Hillary.  For now Stone, who pleaded not guilty in front of a magistrate, is allowed to travel back and forth between his home in Florida and the DC court though he has been required to turn over his passport.  He’ll be back in court on Friday for a hearing in front of Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who also presides over Paul Manafort’s DC case.  Depending on her state of mind Judge Berman could decide to impose a gag order on Stone to keep his TV and radio appearances in check.  For a while it looked like the Stone circus was going to be the story of the day, but then attention shifted to the Senate where the heads of the various US intelligence agencies, including CIA Director Gina Haspel, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats were presenting their overview of the international threats facing the US.  The intelligence heads, all appointed by Trump, provided an assessment that was markedly different from almost anything and everything Trump has been saying.  Despite Trump’s assertions to the contrary they said that in their view North Korea would never agree to give up its nuclear weapons, that despite the rhetoric coming from its leaders and despite its nefarious activities in the Middle East, Iran is still adhering to the terms of the JCPOA nuclear agreement, that ISIS is still alive and plotting attacks around the world and that in addition to continuing to engage in cyberattacks against our elections and utility infrastructure, Russia’s interests and actions are increasingly aligning with those of China, another country engaging in cyber warfare against US institutions.  As to Trump’s top focus, the building of a wall along the Mexico border, they ranked threats from Mexico way down on their list of concerns.  When asked if he was concerned about Trump’s habit of having private, undocumented conversations with Vladimir Putin, particularly about their tete-a-tete in Helsinki, DNI Dan Coats responded that was a “sensitive issue” that could only be discussed behind closed doors, presumably he had more to say in the private session that was scheduled to follow the open hearing.  As to that topic, later in the day the Financial Times reported that Trump and Putin had an additional but previously unreported private session during November’s G 20 meeting in Argentina. Trump was accompanied only by Melania, not even a US interpreter was present.  According to the Russians, who undoubtably have detailed notes and maybe even an electronic record of the conversation, the two leaders, or maybe it would be better to say the one leader and his puppet, discussed the Syrian conflict and the detention by the Russians of several Ukrainian sailors, the incident that had led to Trump “cancelling” a scheduled meeting with Putin in the first place. Its notable that it was after that discussion that Trump came to the conclusion that ISIS had been destroyed and that it was time to withdraw the 2000 US troops in Syria. The decision for Trump to exclude even a US interpreter from the meet-up is particularly troubling and may reflect Trump’s concern that the Democratic legislators who have been considering subpoenaing the testimony of the interpreter who sat in on the Helsinki meeting will pursue that strategy and succeed in learning what he and Putin have been talking about. Also on the Russian front, following the Senate vote that fell just three Senators short of the sixty needed to override Trump’s decision to lift the sanctions against Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska’s aluminum companies, the Steve Mnuchin headed Treasury Department quickly followed through.  As a result of that sanctions relief a number of Russian business men, including Deripaska, have seen the value of their holdings rise substantially.  One of those somewhat wealthier guys is Len Blavatnik, a Ukrainian born dual American citizen billionaire who also has some business ties to Mnuchin.  A number of members of the House and Senate are now questioning why Mnuchin didn’t recuse himself, or at the very least consult with department ethics gurus before signing off on what they believe, was an all too cushy deal for Deripaska and Blavatnik.  It’s hard not to notice that for some reason almost everything in Trumpland seems to involve Oleg Deripaska.  In other Russian front news, because Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is slow walking the appointment of Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee, Democratic Chair Adam Schiff has been unable to forward transcripts of last year’s most questionable testimony to Special Counsel Mueller. That’s a problem because without those official transcripts Mueller can’t move forward with some of his most anticipated and most hoped for indictments of the other Trump administration and family members who are believed to have lied during their House testimony.  At the top of that list is none other than Donald Trump Jr who is thought to have lied bigly about what he knew about the status of the Trump Tower Moscow project among other things.  At least that’s what Democratic Connecticut Senator Blumenthal keeps implying, which is possibly one of the reasons why Trump has started tweet attacking him again.  There is something very special about a draft dodger with “paid for” heel spurs attacking a one-time Marine reservist for exaggerating his service.  

SOTU:  Stacey Abrams, the popular Georgia Democrat who came close but didn’t quite make it to the Georgia Governor’s mansion, will be delivering the official Democrats rebuttal to Trump’s State of the Union speech.  In announcing her selection Senator Schumer said "She is just a great spokesperson, she's an incredible leader. She has led the charge for voting rights, which is at the root of just about everything else."  He didn’t mention that he is trying to persuade the popular Abrams, who wants to make another run for the Governor’s office, to challenge Georgia Senator David Perdue, who is up for reelection in 2020.   As to 2020, Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti has announced that he will not be throwing his hat into the presidential circus.  Garcetti, a former Rhodes scholar with Mexican, Italian and Jewish roots had been considered a possible real contender.  Although she is still in the race, it’s reported that Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s campaign is already suffering defections and almost everyone on the Democratic side of the aisle continues to be really, really unhappy with Howard Schultz so much so that a number are swearing off their latte macchiatos and other such things.           

Vipers 

An Ordinary Day:  By Trump standards, yesterday was a relatively quiet day.  With the Trump shutdown over, at least for now, Speaker Pelosi sent Trump an invitation to make his State of the Union address on February 5, an invitation that he immediately accepted.  As to the shutdown, yesterday in her daily news conference, the one that now takes place once a month, Press Secretary Huckabee Sanders insisted that Trump might still shutdown the government if the group working on resolving border security funding doesn’t provide Trump with funds for his WALL.  That said, a number of Republican Senators are adamantly opposed to the idea of another shutdown, they are concerned about their 2020 political fortunes and aren’t all that pleased that the Congressional Budget Office estimated that, in addition to causing a lot of suffering and the loss of a considerable amount of goodwill,  the shutdown that just ended cost the economy about $11 billion, reflecting lost output from federal workers, delayed government spending and reduced demand.  The CBO estimates that though most of that damage will be reversed as workers return to their jobs, about $3 billion in economic activity will be permanently lost.  Additionally, the CBO projects that economic growth will slow this year to 2.3%, compared with last year’s 3.1%, with much of that decline due to the fact that last year’s tax cuts are having the long term impact that just about everyone except for the administration expected.  In other words, the  $1.5 trillion in tax cuts appears not to have had a major impact on capital investment or hiring plans.  To be sure corporations and the wealthy are better off, but that whole trickle down thing doesn’t appear to be working out all that well for the rest of the country.

Mueller Front:  Trump buddy and self-professed dirty trickster Roger Stone who is telling anyone who’ll listen that the FBI SWAT team that greeted him Friday morning gave him the full Osama bin Laden treatment, will be arraigned today in a Washington DC court.  He is expected to plead not guilty to the seven count indictment bought by Special Counsel Mueller. Yesterday,  Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker who asserts that he has been fully briefed by Mueller on the status of the investigation claimed that it was winding down and nearing completion.  Although Whitaker’s remarks initially received a lot of attention, virtually every media outlet tweeted out the news, once the assorted pundits took a step back they realized that Whitaker was probably just saying what he thinks Trump wants to hear.  It’s hard to believe that Mueller’s team doesn’t need more time to analyze the electronic trail that they just obtained from Stone’s laptops and phones. In addition, the lawyers for Andrew Miller, a sometime aide to Stone, who has been fighting his subpoena for a year, report that Mueller is still seeking his testimony for the grand jury.  In any case, most expect that Mueller has a few more indictments to hand down before he’s done, and that he is saving the best for last, by best think those closest to Trump which may explain why Whitaker made his remarks.  He has an audience of one, and his audience must have given him an earful last weekend over the Stone indictment. Since soon to be Attorney General Barr continues to offer squishy answers to questions concerning whether or not he plans to share Mueller’s final report with the public, Senators Grassley and Blumenthal announced yesterday that they are introducing legislation mandating that the report gets shared with Congress as soon as it is prepared.  In other news,  after the Washington DC judge overseeing Paul Manafort’s case pushed off the hearing on whether or not his lies broke his cooperation deal with Mueller until February 4, his Virginia judge pushed off his previously  planned sentencing hearing saying that he couldn’t move forward until the Washington judge makes her decision.  Michael Cohen, who cancelled his plans to testify in front of an open Joint Oversight and Intelligence hearing citing fears rising from threats made by Trump and Rudy Giuliani has now hired new lawyers and agreed to testify at a closed House Intelligence Committee session on February 8.  He will also meet with the Oversight Committee but his new lawyers have not yet finalized those details.       

2020:  The possibility that former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz will move forward with an independent run for the presidency is freaking out lots of Democrats and never Trumpers but has helped at least one notable person out of his Nancy Pelosi induced depression.  That person, Donald J Trump, is already doing his best to goad Schultz into making a firm commitment to  run with a little reverse psychology, yesterday he tweeted that Schultz doesn’t have the “guts” to do it.  Others remain less enthusiastic to say the least.  During a Barnes & Noble interview by CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin a heckler shouted Schultz down, saying “Don’t Help elect Trump, you egotistical, billionaire asshole.”  Though he didn’t use the same language, former NY Mayor Mike Bloomberg, appears to share the sentiment, he released a statement saying that he’s done the research and concluded that “in 2020, the great likelihood is that an independent would just split the anti-Trump vote,” adding the “data was very clear and consistent, given the strong pull of partisanship and the realities of the electoral college system, thee is no way an independent can win.”  Bloomberg went on to say that this is the same conclusion he made in 2016 and it’s the reason that if he decides to run he’ll run as a Democrat, summing up his view by saying “we must remain united, and we must not allow any candidate to divide or fracture us.”  Despite the criticism Schultz seems to be moving towards running.  He’s hired Steve Schmidt, the Republican political consultant who dropped his party affiliation last year over his disgust with Trump.  Schmidt’s proven before that his judgement isn’t always spot on, he worked on John McCain’s 2008 campaign and was okay with Sarah Palin until he wasn’t.  At this point the best thing that can be said about Schultz’s ambitions and Schmidt’s willingness to serve as his “gun for hire” is that the two are just trying to push the Democrats back towards the middle or at least towards a position that’s just left of center.  They probably are less than pleased with Medicare for All, and Senator Warren’s wealth tax proposal, the one that would mandate that people like Schultz with assets in excess of $50 million hand over 2% or more of their fortune every year. In other election news, Joe Biden says he’ll make his decision on whether to run soon,  former Attorney General Eric Holder is considering a run and despite reports that she is also thinking about jumping back into the fray, Hillary Clinton’s associates say she is not, thank goodness.    

Other News:  During yesterday’s press conference national security advisor Bolton and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin announced sanctions against PDVSA, Venezuela’s state owned oil company, part of an effort to prevent Venezuela’s President Maduro and his cronies from continuing to use the firm as their personal piggy bank.  When asked if any other measures were planned against Venezuela, Bolton said that all options were on the table, a comment that implied that military options are possible.  That concern was heightened when virtually every camera in the room panned to the yellow pad held sloppily in Bolton’s arms where the words “5000 troops to Colombia” were written in an all too decipherable scrawl. The White House response to questions about Bolton’s revealing pad was that since they had already announced that all military options are on the table what’s the bigly deal, it’s not like Bolton has a personal email server or anything, he’s just sharing state secrets.  Trump, who is already steaming about having to cave to Speaker Pelosi and the Stone indictments, is also fairly pissed off with the sensational disclosures in the books being hawked by former Governor Chris Christie and one time aide Cliff Sims.  Christie is fairly soft on Trump but hammers Jared Kushner, blaming him for upending his methodical approach to transition planning, a fair criticism given the benefit of hindsight and the number of truly unqualified people that the Trump team hired once Christie was summarily kicked off the team at Kushner’s “suggestion.”  Sims’ book is entitled “Nest of Vipers” which pretty much says it all. 

Cave Art

The Art of the Cave: Trump caved on Friday, bigly, ending the longest shutdown, one that will forever bear his name.  At the end, bad news about the shutdown’s impact on economic growth, heart tugging stories about government workers choosing between cancer treatments and rent payments, Republican senators starting to mutiny, the usually composed FBI Director Wray circulating a videotaped message to agents saying that the shutdown had made him about as angry as he’s been in a long time,  and, the final straw, ground holds at LaGuardia, the home of Trump One, forced Trump’s hand. He called a Rose Garden press conference where he announced that he had agreed to sign a short term funding resolution, one without any money for his precious wall.  As part of the deal, a group made up of “appropriators” from both houses and parties as well as representatives of the Department of Homeland Security are supposed to come up with an acceptable plan to fund border security by February 15, or else.  In an attempt to make Trump appear presidential and to label his cave as a victory, Trump’s communication staff loaded prepared remarks into his teleprompter and for about three minutes Trump stuck to the script but then he started rambling.  After disingenuously saying that no one ever said that a 2000 mile cement border wall was necessary, that some “border slats” combined with smart technology would be sufficient he went off on his standard immigrant rant, talked about more huge caravans heading towards the border and once again threw in his usual nonsense about violent criminals making lefts, followed by rights, and then another left, whatever that’s supposed to mean, before flooring their trucks and bashing through border crossings.  Then, most likely because of some weird personal obsession, he started talking about those duct taped, tied up women locked into trunks and smuggled into the country, a description  that has the border police so confused that they actually sent out a bulletin asking their patrols to forward any records they might have concerning inappropriate use of duct tape. Maybe they should check the basements at all the Trump buildings and golf courses, starting with the ones where he employed all of the undocumented migrants for years, the ones who are now being fired despite their loyalty because, well we all know why.  By the time Trump finished his rant he was back to asserting that all 2000 miles of the border could only be protected with a full cement wall.  As expected the loons on Trump’s right, started squawking even before his speech ended, calling him out for failing to hold firm on his wall promise.  Ann Coulter announced that he had supplanted George HW Bush as the wimpiest president ever.  It didn’t take long for Trump to tweet that he’d been misunderstood, he still needs WALL and if he doesn’t get it and all the money he wants by the new February 15 drop dead date he will either close the government down again or declare a national emergency. Taking a pause from gloating, Speaker Pelosi made it clear that she still considers wall funding immoral and with her Democratic coalition standing with her it doesn’t look like she’s ready to give Trump what he wants.  Absent an acceptable resolution from the newly formed Homeland Security funding committee, one that includes something, anything that Trump can recharacterize as WALL, he will probably go the national emergency route, a declaration that will almost immediate end up in the courts.  As to deal making skills, it turns out that son-in-law Kushner’s skills are as questionable as Trump’s.  Over the weekend it was reported a confident Kushner was so sure that he could turn enough Democrats into WALL supporters that he actually believed and persuaded Trump to believe that he had the votes to get the Republican version of funding legislation passed last Thursday.  He was very wrong but did manage to keep the shutdown going for a few more days. So much for nepotism. So much for Kushner’s judgement.

Roger Dodger:  In an especially ironic plot twist, Roger Stone, Trump’s long term friend and frequent advisor, the person responsible for coming up with the WALL idea in the first place, a technique to get Trump to remember to discuss border security during his campaign pep rallies rather than a real commitment to build a wall, was arrested early Friday morning just as Trump’s team was preparing his “cave” speech.  The Stone indictments had been obtained on Thursday but were kept secret until early Friday morning to give teams of unpaid but dedicated FBI agents the time to pick up Stone at his Florida home, while also raiding his Harlem apartment and his Florida office, allowing agents to scoop up all of Stone’s electronic equipment, including his phones and laptops before he got a chance to destroy anything incriminating like encrypted WhatsApp messages and other such stuff.  The indictments charge Stone with witness tampering, obstruction of justice and false statements to Congress.  Though the indictments are what Trump’s team likes to refer to as “only” process indictments in that they aren’t about any actual “collusion” crime they reflect Mueller’s belief that Stone is the link between  the Trump campaign, possibly even Trump, WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange and Guccifer 2.0, the Russian military officer who hacked into the DNC server.  Though he denies it now, Stone previously bragged about his connections and communications with WikiLeaks and Guccifer 2.0.  Stone is an incredibly bizarre and nefarious character. He’s a self-proclaimed dirty trickster whose engagement in the dark art of campaign manipulation goes back to the Nixon era.  In fact, he remains so enamored of Nixon that he has a rather large tattoo of Nixon’s face on this back. He and Trump met years ago through their mutual friend Roy Cohn, the ruthless lawyer who represented Senator McCarthy during the “lets root out all of the Communists, real or not” hearings of the 1950s.  Over the years Stone has engaged in dark campaign arts for several Republican presidential candidates, he was once thrown off the Bob Dole campaign after he got caught advertising in a “swinger” magazine for a buff military type to join him and his wife in a threesome, an accusation that he initially denied but then admitted was true. Stone is also tied to Paul Manafort, the two were once partners in a political consulting/lobbying firm. Early on Stone was an official member of the Trump campaign team, but dropped off the squad, probably an effort to distance his questionable activities from Trump and the campaign. Despite stepping down from his official role he never stopped communicating with Trump.  The witness tampering mentioned in the indictment refers to his attempt to persuade another odd character, Randy Credico, a liberal radio talk show host/comedian who may or may not have served as an intermediary between Stone and WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange.  Stone wanted Credico to pull a “Frank Patangeli” (i.e. lie to the Grand Jury like a character in the Godfather) and threatened to kill him and kidnap his beloved therapy dog Bianca if he refused to comply.  Despite Stone’s threats, Credico did testify before Mueller’s Grand Jury, with little Bianca in tow.  Mueller’s long and detailed “talking indictment” asserts that Stone received direction from someone senior in the Trump campaign (Steve Bannon? Rick Gates?) who then received direction from someone even more senior (Trump?) to continue communicating with Assange about the timing of the DNC email dumps at a time when Trump was out on the campaign trail publicly calling for “Russia, if you're listening” to dump the emails. Jerome Corsi, another fairly nefarious odd ball who is the propagator of the Obama birther nonsense,  is also referred to in the Mueller indictments as another possible connection to Julian Assange.  On Friday Stone insisted that he would never testify against Trump because he loves him so much and to do so would require that he lie and he would “never” ever lie.  By Sunday he told just about every talk show host who would listen that he’d be happy to spend time in the Mueller hot seat but only to testify against everyone but Trump, “If there’s wrongdoing by other people in the campaign that I know about, which I know of none, but if there is, I would certainly testify honestly."  For his part, Corsi now says that he’ll be happy to testify against Stone.  None of these devious characters would go over well in any jury trial but they, and more notably their electronic trail, can help Mueller fill in some blanks.  Expectations, or hopes because it’s frequently hard to distinguish between the two, are that an indictment of Don Trump Jr or maybe even son in law Kushner is next.     

2020:  The RNC came out in support of Trump this weekend, no shock since he controls the RNC.  Though it’s not clear that they’ll be able to pull it off, they may be trying to cancel the Republican presidential primaries in an effort to make sure that no other Republicans challenge Trump.  The RNC may be concerned about Maryland Governor Larry Hogan who is reported to be considering doing just that.  Although one Democratic contender, West Virginia’s former State Senator Richard Ojeda, a relative unknown, did drop out of the race a number of more prominent individuals are expected to jump in shortly.  One of those is Senator Bernie Sanders, who though he is not really a Democrat, plays one every four years at presidential primary time.  His people have already starting backstabbing a number of other Democratic candidates, notably California Senator Kamala Harris and potential candidate Beto O’Rourke as not progressive enough.  Notably Harris formally rolled out her candidacy on Sunday with a rousing speech in Oakland California.  One of the ways that she is owning her past while pushing back at criticism that she was a too aggressive prosecutor is by using “Kamala for the People” as her campaign logo. In 2016, Michael Bloomberg opted to stay out of the presidential race after he concluded that a run as an independent would probably make Trump’s ascencion to power even more inevitable than it turned out to be, if he runs this time, he’ll run as a Democrat.  Starbuck’s Howard Schultz missed that message, he is now seriously considering running for president as an Independent because he views the Democratic party, particularly some of its potential candidates call for Medicare for all as too radical.  Needless to say, Democrats aren’t all that happy about the thought of Schultz running as an independent.  They believe, and they are probably right, that his candidacy would result in four more years of Trump, assuming that is that Trump isn’t otherwise detained.  Yikes.

International News:  Venezuela continues to be a mess, however at least for the moment “President for now” Maduro has lifted his expusion order against US Diplomats.  On the Afghanistan front,  over the weekend Taliban officials said US negotiators have agreed on a draft peace pact setting out the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan within 18 months.  This morning Afghan President Ashraf Ghani seemed to confirm those remarks. So far US officials have announced only that progress towards withdrawal is being made.  

Crocodiles and Stone!

Shutdown Saga: Following a tumultuous Republicans only Senate luncheon during which a number of  Republican Senators yelled at VP Pence over Trump’s stupid shutdown and the damage it was doing to the party’s popularity and future electoral prospects and Senate Leader McConnell, who is equally responsible for the “Trump” shutdown, made it clear that he too thinks that shutdowns are stupid and pointless, the Senate preceded to vote on both the Trump approved and Pelosi approved government spending plans.  As predicted neither plan received close to the 60 votes needed for passage. Only one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin voted for the Trump plan while two of the most anti-immigrant Republicans, Utah’s Mike Lee and Arkansas’ Tom Cotton, and all of the remaining Democrats opposed it. In total the Republican/Trump plan received 50 votes.  The Pelosi approved/Democratic plan actually received three more votes with six Republicans, including Colorado’s Gardner, Tennessee’s  Lamar Alexander, Utah’s Mitt Romney, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Maine’s Susan Collins and Georgia’s Johnny Isakson joining all the Democrats including Manchin in voting for it. After the votes, things got so hot on the Senate floor that Colorado’s usually moderate and soft spoken Democratic Senator Michael Benet exploded at Texas blowhard Ted Cruz.  Benet ripped into Cruz for his “fake crocodile tears” over unpaid first responders, not because he wasn’t sympathetic about the failure to pay government employees but because Cruz had forced a sixteen day closure of the government back in 2013 in an attempt to repeal Obamacare at a time when Colorado, suffering from severe flooding, desperately needed funds for disaster relief. With that speech, Benet, another possible Democratic presidential contender, may have catapulted himself over number of the other contenders. After the votes and the Senate speeches, Trump held one of his rambling impromptu press conferences. As usual his musings were all over the place, he went from sounding like he was ready to negotiate with Schumer and Pelosi to starting up his “there’s another huge migrant caravan coming and what about those kidnapped women with tape over the mouths and all those illegal drug coming in on huge tractors” routine. He trashed immigrants but then talked about how the country needed more of them, something that flies in the face of his little whisperer Stephen Miller’s plans.  He also tried to “interpret” the truly callous remarks made earlier in the day by his Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.  In those comments Ross suggested that unpaid, financially distressed government employees should get off the food lines and seek loans from their friendly local relationship bankers to cover their routines expenses, kind of his version of the Lara Trump, let them eat cake routine.  Trump explained away Ross’ comment saying that he just meant that the unpaid government workers should tell their grocers and their mortgage holders to hold their horses, they’ll get paid someday.  That’s a strategy that has worked countless times for Trump so he doesn’t understand why it wouldn’t work for everyone else.  Trump’s economic advisor Larry Kudlow proved that he too is in the “let them eat cake” camp.  He referred to the government workers as people suffering from a mere “glitch” who should be happy that they’ve been given the opportunity to volunteer their services to serve the greater good of the country. As to the shutdown, it’s not clear that a solution is imminent although at least Schumer and McConnell are now negotiating. For his part Trump insists he still needs a “pro-rated down payment on his wall” but since nobody knows what that means there is a chance that if he’s told that he’s getting some money that counts as a pro rata of something, an agreement to open the government for a few weeks while homeland security funding gets worked out is possible, subject of course to final signoff from “Nancy” who Trump pretty much admitted is in charge these days.            

Mueller Time!  This morning after months of anticipation, Trump’s friend/advisor Roger Stone finally got the full Mueller treatment.  He was arrested and charged with seven counts including obstruction, false statements and witness-tampering.  Tune in at 11 AM for more details and his court appearance.  Recent reports indicate that Mueller has also been ramping up his investigation into the NRA’s collaboration with Putin directed Russian intermediaries, including Red Sparrow Maria Butina and the organization’s acceptance of Russian contributions, funds that then made their way to a variety of Republican candidates most notably Trump.  To that end the Elijah Cummings led House Oversight Committee which is focusing in on how a number of Trump’s staff, relatives and appointees received their security clearances, appears to be very interested in national security advisor John Bolton’s involvement with the NRA and the speech that he once made in Russia, purportedly to endorse Russian gun rights, even though in Putin led Russia, Russian citizens do not have gun rights. How Bolton got his security clearance is just the tip of a very murky iceberg.  Last night NBC revealed that thirty or more Trump staff members and advisors received their security clearances even though they failed reviews by career White House security specialists.  Notably one of those advisors was none other than Jared Kushner, his review process was so hinky that it falls into a class of its own.   NBC reports that in May 2017, a former Pentagon employee named Carl Kline was installed as the director of the White House’s personnel security office.  Over the objection of two senior career specialists, Kline approved Kushner’s top security clearance despite all of his financial entanglements and the questionable meetings he had with foreign officials before and during the Trump campaign, those include all of the interactions that Kushner initially left off of his security application forms, the forms that he ultimately revised dozens of times.  It is highly unusual for the recommendations of the career specialists to be overridden.  As to Kushner, upon obtaining his top security clearance he then requested the even higher “sensitive compartmental information or “SCI” designation so that he could be read in on the most sensitive government secrets.  That designation is granted by the CIA not the White House.  Upon reviewing Kushner’s files and conducting their own background check, CIA specialists questioned how Kushner had ever gotten his top security clearance in the first place and refused to grant him the SCI designation.  Neither Trump nor Kushner can be all that happy that Cummings is now trying to get to the bottom of all that.  After Trump former fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen announced that he was postponing his plans to voluntarily testify before the House Intelligence and Oversight Committees over concerns for his family arising out of threats from Trump and his current fixer/lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the Senate Intelligence Committee jumped in and subpoenaed him to appear before their committee.  In all likelihood the House committees will follow suit. Cohen is now scheduled to meet with the Senate Committee on February 12.  Some have suggested that Giuliani, who unlike Trump, can be indicted, should be investigated for witness tampering.    

Let Them Eat Cake

Trump Shutdown:  Yesterday despite the fact that Speaker Pelosi had cancelled her invitation for Trump to deliver his State of the Union Address in her House, he tried calling her bluff, insisting that he would.  She held firm, saying that he could try but that she would lock the doors, turn off the lights and hide the video equipment.  After a day of back and forth during which someone in the White House might have actually read the constitution and informed him that it really was her House and thus her right to hide the keys, Trump finally conceded, but not before calling her and the Democratic party out as nothing but a group of radicals, like she cares.  Last night he tweeted that “This is her prerogative - I will do the Address when the Shutdown is over.”  The tweet was too well written to have actually come from Trump and he probably has something else up his sleeve but for now the speech is officially postponed.  With that thorny issued placed on the back burner, its back to figuring a way out of the shutdown morass. To that end, Majority Leader McConnell plans to hold two votes today.  The first will be for Trump’s funding plan, the one that provides $5.7 billion for the wall, three years of protection for DACA recipients and TPS beneficiaries and a host of onerous changes to refugee and immigration policies, and the second for the Democrats’ funding plan, the one that reopens the government through early February providing more time to work out a border security funding compromise.  The Democratic plan is the one that the Senate previously voted for before the unpredictable and jittery Trump decided to pull his support under pressure from Ann Coulter and her crowd.  As of now, neither bill is expected to garner the sixty votes needed for passage though a few Republicans including at risk Senators Cory Gardner and Susan Collins have said that they will vote for the Democratic plan.  Notably Senator Collins who likes to hedge her bets has also said that she will vote for the Trump plan.  Assuming no other Republicans follow their lead, a fair assumption, little will be accomplished today.  However, its thought that the mere fact that McConnell is allowing the votes to take place is an indication that he’s becoming open to finding a way out of the shutdown hole. For her part, Speaker Pelosi has indicated that the Democrats are willing to provide more funding for what she is calling “smart” border security, possibly even the amount that Trump is seeking as long as it is not used for building Trump’s vanity wall.  It’s not clear where the White House is going with all of this, or if they even know where they are going.  Having never planned for a shutdown Trump and his crowd, by crowd think Jared, VP Pence and Mick Mulvaney, the so called acting chief of staff, never anticipated that starving parts of the government might actually be problematic, nor did they anticipate that Trump’s polls, typically fixed in the 40% plus or minus range would actually take a hit and they have taken a hit.  Yesterday a CBS poll showed Trump’s approval rating has dropped to 36% and also indicated just how unpopular the wall is and that most Americans, even many who like the wall don’t think that shutting the government down to get it is worth the trouble.  It doesn’t help that in a joint statement the unions that represent pilots, air traffic controllers  and flight attendants warned of the potentially dire consequence of the shutdown saying “We have a growing concern for the safety and security of our members, our airlines and the traveling public due to the government shutdown. In our risk averse industry, we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break.”  At the same time five former Department of Homeland Secretaries, including Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, Janet Napolitano, Jeh Johnson and John Kelly, who was Chief of Staff when the shutdown began, sent Trump and Congress a letter calling “on our elected leaders to restore the funding necessary to ensure our homeland remains safe and that the Department’s critical national security functions continue without compromise." They went on to call the failure to pay workers “unconscionable.”  It’s not clear that Trump really cares or that he is ready to compromise. Late yesterday the Washington Post reported that Mulvaney has asked department leaders to identify the highest-impact programs that would be jeopardized if the shutdown continues into March and April, a sign the administration is either “preparing for a lengthy funding lapse,” or that someone in the White House is trying to explain to Trump that his actions have real consequences as if the failure to pay people living paycheck to paycheck isn’t enough of a consequence.  As to that paycheck thing, Trump daughter in law Lara, Eric’s wife, wants federal workers to know that their sacrifice is worth it for “the future of the country,” her “let them eat cake” moment.  Do you think she knows how things turned out for Marie Antoinette?

Investigatory Things:   Trump’s one time lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen has postponed his February 7 plans to voluntarily testify before the House citing "ongoing threats against his family" from Trump and current attorney/fixer Rudy Giuliani.  Cohen isn’t wrong about those threats, we’ve all heard them loud and clear especially the one issued by Trump during his on air interview with FOX’s Jeanine Pirro.  For his part when asked about the threats, Trump said "Well I would say he's been threatened by the truth. He's only been threatened by the truth," like Trump has any familiarity with the truth.  Others including a number of former federal attorneys and possibly even Special Counsel Mueller would say that those threats from Trump and Giuliani count as witness intimidation.  Certainly House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff and House Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings believe that, they issued a joint statement slamming Trump and Giuliani for "efforts to intimidate witnesses, scare their family members, or prevent them from testifying before Congress."  It’s highly likely that they will subpoena Cohen to appear in front of their committees shortly. House Democrats also have plans to hear from Acting Attorney General Scott Whitaker, Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and a number of other Trump administration official who probably aren’t looking forward to spending time with them. They are also looking into things like how Jared Kushner ever managed to get his security clearance. On the Mueller front Paul Manafort is expected back in court on Friday to confront charges that he’s a bigly liar.  His lawyers filed papers yesterday insisting that Manafort doesn’t deserve to have his cooperation agreement revoked because he isn’t a liar, just very forgetful and an inventive story teller.  As to all that investigatory stuff, though Mueller’s team appears to be adequately funded for now, the FBI and the Justice Department are reportedly short on cash and cutting back on indictments and other crime fighting activities, another consequence of the Trump shutdown, possibly an intended one.         

Venezuela:  While most of us have been focused on the government shutdown and the Russia investigation things have continued to deteriorate going from bad to worse in Venezuela.  Yesterday, in a bid to force out Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Trump recognized popular opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s interim leader.  By doing so he joined Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay and Peru whose leaders also say that they recognize and give their full support to Guaido.  Maduro responded by cutting off relations with the US and ordering that all US diplomats leave the country within 72 hours.  The Trump administration then responded by saying that since it no longer recognizes Maduro as the country’s leader the order for the US diplomats to leave is invalid.  Right or wrong, Trump who earlier in his administration considered invading Venezuela, may have just found his “wag the dog” moment. Military intervention could be next.

Shutdown Blues

Trump Shutdown:  One month in and critical portions of the government are still in shutdown mode.  More of the workers who had initially been deemed non-essential  are being called back to work, no paychecks just work. Additionally, more unpaid workers are showing up at food pantries, loading up their credit cards, seeking payment deferrals and, when possible, obtaining zero interest loans.  For a brief moment yesterday, after a number of news outlets reported that Senate leaders Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer had agreed upon a deal to reopen the government, it looked like a temporary reprieve was imminent but that optimism faded after the details of their “agreement” were revealed.  Essentially McConnell has agreed to allow votes on two pieces of legislation.  The first is a version of the Trump approved plan, the one that provides $5.7 billion in wall funding, billions more for other border related services and three years of protection for DACA recipients and those currently benefitting from Temporary Protected Status (TPS).  In an attempt to attract some Democratic support, McConnell added $12.7 billion in disaster relief and an extension of the Violence Against Women Act that he earlier allowed to expire.  Unfortunately to appease his right flank he also surreptitiously added a few more onerous provisions suggested by Trump anti-immigrant whisperer Stephen Miller, including changes to the asylum law that would make it more difficult for people seeking refuge from persecution and violence at home. Among them are provisions specifically barring children from Central American from claiming asylum inside the US, requiring them instead to do so in their own countries as well as provisions providing for an accelerated process for sending “unqualified” children back home.  The second piece of legislation is a Democratic plan that is essentially a stopgap spending bill that would fund the government through February 8 without providing any new money for the wall. It would let both parties negotiate on border security while the government is reopened, a respite Democrats have been demanding all along.  No Democrats are likely to vote for the Republican bill although a few Republicans might vote for both bills.  In any case neither bill is expected to garner the sixty votes needed for passage.  At best, the votes will mark the beginning of a more bipartisan negotiating process, at worst nothing will have changed.  In any case the shutdown will continue and no paychecks will be forthcoming on Friday. In the meantime Trump and Pelosi continue to tussle over whether or not Trump will be allowed to deliver his State of the Union Speech in “her” house.  The White House is pretending that he’s still invited to speak and is moving ahead with plans however, they are also exploring other alternatives and reportedly are preparing two separate speeches, one tailored for a rally setting, another for the Capitol, neither is likely to be all that warm or reassuring.  In other White House news, its also been reported, disputed and then reported again that Trump plans to host those charming Covington School students at the White House once the government reopens.  To no one’s surprise, Trump has concluded that they are totally innocent victims of vicious left wing “false news” and while various video snippets do reflect that the initial reports about the teens behavior missed the whole picture, none of the more “complete” reports appear to justify their thuggish actions. Notably, in addition to mocking the Native American veteran they were also heard chanting some rape justification slogans, hardly appropriate behavior for any group of teens.  One White House denizen has apparently had enough with all of the nonsense, apparently Shahira Knight, the White House legislative affairs director, tired of being pushed aside by son in law Kushner, has had it.  She’s looking for an exit ramp and given that she’s one of the view White House employees who is widely respected on the outside, she is likely to find a home.  In that respect her career prospects are different than those of Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.  She had earlier signaled that she was leaving at year end, but for some relatively obvious reason has not found a welcoming landing pad.  Though we still hear from her on occasion, it turns out that the reason that her daily press conferences have disappeared is that Trump has told her not to bother, according to him the press is just too hostile, and who wants to answer any probing questions anyway.  As to Rudy Giuliani, he may or may not be insane, his shenanigans may or may not be part of a brilliant strategy intended to prepare the general public for Trump damning news to come and he may or may not have worn out his welcome at the White House.  Like everything else out there, only Trump knows, and his view changes with the wind.

The Supremes:  Though they didn’t issue any decisions yesterday, the Supreme Court did make some news.  They issued an order temporarily allowing Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military to go into effect while the lower courts work through the case.  SCOTUS could just have easily maintained the status quo, which allowed transgender people to serve while the case was making its way up the chain so this order could well provide an indication that the increasingly conservative court will ultimate rule in Trump’s favor despite the fact that all indications are that transgender troops are not a problem except in the minds of those on the religious right.  As expected, SCOTUS did not act on the Trump administration's effort to end the DACA program, leaving protections for nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children in place probably until 2020.  By not including DACA on their docket the court pretty much made Trump’s grand gesture to extend DACA protection for three years in exchange for wall funding worthless.  On the gun rights front, SCOTUS surprised many by agreeing to hear a guns rights case, notable because they have sidestepped gun cases for the past decade.  The case concerns a New York City rule that strictly limits licensed gun owners from carrying legally owned guns, those permitted for home protection only, outside of their home, the rule allows owners to take their guns to approved practice ranges with the city limits but prohibits them from transporting firearms outside of the city even to practice at ranges near their second homes.  Lower courts have upheld the city’s regulations but with Justice Kennedy gone, replaced by Justice Kavanaugh who believes that the Second Amendment prohibits almost any gun restrictions, the prospects for the continuation of the NYC restriction look dim, hardly good news for gun control advocates.  Lastly, Solicitor General Noel Francisco has asked the judges to rule by June on whether or not a question concerning citizenship can be included in the 2020 census.  In an effort to get that question, which a lower court judge trashed, approved in time to have it included in the census, he is requesting that the Supreme Court jump ahead of the next in line Federal Appeals court.  The administration is in a hurry to make sure that they can dissuade as many immigrants from participating in the census, part of an effort to underfund and underrepresent localities with large immigrant populations.

Election Update:  The 2020 election season is already upon us but 2018 isn’t over yet.  Yesterday, a state judge in North Carolina declined to certify election results in the 9th Congressional District, citing state election officials’ authority to delay certification while they continue to investigate allegations of election fraud; that’s the district where the Republican candidate “won” by hiring a consultant who collected and then threw out bunches of absentee ballots from people who probably voted for his Democratic opponent.  Early this morning, another Democrat, South Bend Indiana’s Mayor Pete Buttigieg,  threw his hat into the presidential race.  Buttigieg aspires to become the first openly gay president of the US.  Gay or straight, he is a long shot candidate.  In other 2020 news, some people must be taking Senator Kamala Harris’ campaign seriously, a number of right wing sorts are questioning her citizenship claiming that because neither of her parents were US citizens when she was born in the US that she couldn’t possibly qualify to run for president.  Apparently they are unfamiliar with the birthright citizenship provisions of the Constitution.  They are also outraged that she attended high school in the rogue country of Canada.  Now, if only she had gone to school in Moscow.                

Carnivores and Egg Sandwiches

Trump Shutdown:  Thirty two days in, Speaker Pelosi still hasn’t spoken directly with Trump since he stormed out of their last meeting.  For his part Trump continues to insist that he won’t back down from his demand for a $5.7 billion down payment on his vanity wall/metal slats project even though he knows that his popularity ratings have taken a hit and that he and his party are being blamed for the shutdown despite his efforts to tweet the blame over to “Nancy and the Dems.”  Government employees are about to go without their second paycheck with some on the verge of losing some health care benefits.  Senate Leader McConnell plans to introduce Trump approved legislation today but with no Democratic senators signing on he doesn’t expect to get anywhere near the sixty votes he needs for passage. Republican senators know that their party is taking a hit for the shutdown but most are unwilling to go on the record opposing Trump and don’t see the point in voting on any legislation he won’t sign even though they probably could muster the votes to override his veto if they had to.  On the prospect of a funding bill that doesn’t include wall funding, North Carolina’s Senator Burr said if Trump won’t sign it, why would we work on it?  Putting it for many of his fellow lemmings, Wyoming’s Senator Barrasso said he’s “ready to vote for anything” that Trump agrees to sign, “and once we get that, I am a ‘yes’ vote. Louisiana’s Senator Kennedy whose nonsensical homilies have taken on a life of their own said we all know Trump “feels strongly about issues.  And he’s a carnivore.  And on this one I can tell you, he believes he’s right.” Whatever that means. Alaska’s Murkowski appears to be one of  few Republican senators willing to openly express her frustration, with so much of her state and so many of her constituents relying on Federal moneys she just wants to see the government open and is would be fine voting for whatever makes that happen the fastest, however her Alaskan colleague Senator Sullivan, who is up for reelection in 2020, is less concerned about his constituents, he is still firmly on team Trump.  Kevin Hassett, the Chairman of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisors, who tends to make the rosiest, most Trump friendly forecasts estimates that the shutdown is depressing quarterly growth by around .5% per month.  Other economists suggest that the negative impact on US growth could already be as high as 1% and that’s just the impact on the US, the worldwide impact is also growing.   But not to worry, because Trump promises that his economy will attain a 4% annual growth and he’s the expert, right?

Rudy, Rudy, Rudy:  Rudy Giuliani is now walking back all of the stupid things he said this weekend while trying to defend Trump.  He started by denying that he told the New York Times or anyone else like NBC’s Chuck Todd on the air with the cameras rolling that Trump was involved in the Trump Tower Moscow project up until the day of the 2016 presidential election, saying instead that his remarks were “hypothetical” and “they didn’t represent the actual timing or circumstances of any such discussions.”   Additionally, he’s going after the assertion that was made in the now discredited Buzzfeed article, the one that said that Mueller had some type of hard evidence that Trump had directed former fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen’s deceptive Congressional testimony.  In a truly strange interview with The New Yorker  Giuliani said that he knows that such evidence doesn’t insist because he’s read all of the relevant texts and listened to all of the tapes that Mueller has managed to obtain, but then when the author of the New Yorker piece asked about the tapes that Giuliani said he had listened too, he backtracked there as well insisting that he misspoke, there are no tapes and if anyone says there are, they are just misspeaking too.  In a moment of rare candor Giuliani went on to say that he does worry some days that his tombstone will say that he lied for Trump but then he quickly added that St Peter will either know that’s not true or forgive him.  Kellyanne Conway’s tweeting husband George isn’t so sure.  After truncating Giuliani’s backpedaling word linguini into a terse four word “I make sh-t up,” Conway suggested that Giuliani get himself a lawyer of his own, a good one.  As to the Buzzfeed article, it turns out that Mueller’s office didn’t make the decision to come forward on their own, their rare comment came about after they received a call from someone in the administration’s legal department.  When asked about that, a suddenly tight lipped Giuliani said he couldn’t confirm or deny whether that call came from him.

2020:  California’s Senator Kamala Harris is off and running.  After announcing her candidacy on Good Morning America she stopped off at Grand Central Station for an egg sandwich figuring that it’s better to be seen eating on camera than be seen with your mouth open at the dentist’s office a la Beto O’Rourke, one of the many maybe candidates.  Her next stop is South Carolina, an early primary state where Black voters make up a large part of the Democratic voting pool.  She may or may not pass two of her possible rivals, Senators Booker and Sanders who both spent Martin Luther King Day campaigning in the state even though neither one is an official candidate, yet.  The fifty-four year old Harris who has a lot of ethnic groups covered, her father is Jamaican, her mother Indian (the country, not Native American), her husband is Jewish, is expected to be one of the leaders of the ever expanding Democratic field and, despite the fact that her California colleague Senator Feinstein says that she prefers candidates with more experience, her way of saying that she’s holding out for septuagenarian Joe Biden, she is likely to do very well, or should I say better do very well, in delegate rich California, which is now another one of those early primary states.  Though he doesn’t appear to be running for president in 2020, Secretary of State Pompeo is seriously considering running for the Senate.  He is being recruited by Mitch McConnell to run for the seat being vacated by Kansas Senator Pat Roberts who has announced that he will not be running for reelection when his term ends in 2020.  Pompeo doesn’t have to commit yet, a former Kansas Congressman, he’s popular in the state and other candidates would probably move aside if he decided to run.  However, if and when he opts in it will be a direct slap in Trump’s face and an indication that Pompeo, the usually obsequious Trump fan boy, thinks it’s time to leave a sinking ship. Getting back to MLK Day, in response to all the criticism thrown his way on the morning talk shows Trump who had nothing else on his schedule except for watching news shows scooped up VP Pence for a ride over to the MLK memorial to show two minutes of respect.    

What Sanctions?  Last week Democratic leader Chuck Schumer failed to persuade enough Republican Senators to join him in voting for a resolution that would have prevented Treasury Secretary Mnuchin from moving forward with sanctions relief for Russian oligarch/Putin buddy, one time Paul Manafort patron Oleg Deripaska’s aluminum companies. The New York Times reports that Mnuchin was less than forthcoming about the “concessions” that Deripaska made in order to get that sanctions relief.  Contrary to Mnuchin’s assertion that Deripaska had agreed to give up majority control over his companies, the reality is that he will maintain control, that his agreed to “transfer” of controlling shares to other interests is just more Russian smoke and mirrors with some of those “mirrors” being made up of family members and other sanctioned Russian entities. Additionally, Deripaska will be financially benefiting from the transfer, he will be freed from the obligation to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.  Score another one for Putin.

Buzzkill

Mueller Talks:  After a day of euphoria and calls from many, including some Democratic legislators, for the immediate initiation of impeachment proceedings against Trump over Thursday night’s Buzzfeed bombshell that Special Counsel Mueller’s team had some form of written evidence proving that Trump had suborned perjury by directing the lies that one time lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen told Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project, the Special Counsel’s generally tightlipped spokesman threw buckets of cold water on the story, sending the #TrumpImpeachment  crowd back into depression land. The Mueller ice bath came in the form of a statement saying that “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate.” Because the Mueller missive doesn’t appear to debunk all of the components of the Buzzfeed scoop, some pundits surmise that Buzzfeed is on to something but is off on the evidentiary details.  Others, including a rather haughty Ronan Farrow who went out of his way to say that he had heard from the same sources but had opted against printing the story for months because he had other sources that contradicted the core of their assertions, seemed almost gleeful that they hadn’t been scooped.  Curiously, no one at the White House fully denied the story until after Mueller’s spokesman released his statement, a possible indication that no one there has a clue what Trump has or hasn’t done and/or an indication that Trump was so enraged by the story that his people pressured Mueller to speak out or face the consequences.  Even Trump maintained twitter silence until after the Mueller “exoneration” at which point he actually thanked Mueller for defending his honor, funny when you consider how many times he’s slammed Mueller’s credibility by calling the investigation a witch hunt and Mueller the leader of a thirteen member Democratic cabal.  Despite the weekend of criticism from their press colleagues, White House spokespeople and Trump, Buzzfeed stands by the story, insisting that eventually they will be vindicated.  Further muddying the waters or in this case the cesspool, Trump’s current spokesperson/lawyer Rudy Giuliani released a potential bombshell of his own on Sunday.  Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, he appears to have extended the time period that the Trump team, including Trump, were actively negotiating the Trump Moscow Tower project up until election eve November 2016.  Further, on CNN’s State of the Union Giuliani added that Trump may have spoken with Cohen about his mendacious Congressional testimony saying that the two spoke all the time and that could have been something they spoke about.  He rambled "I don't know if it happened or didn't happen. It may be attorney-client privilege if it happened, where I can't acknowledge it. But I have no knowledge that he spoke to him, but I'm telling you I wasn't there then. So what if he talked to him about it?" He ended by saying that he wasn’t aware of any conversations where Trump told or counseled Cohen to lie.  Though it’s easy to dismiss Giuliani’s admissions and his hedging about Cohen’s testimony as dementia induced outbursts, frequently his word scramble proves to be part of a shrewdly calculated strategy intended to prepare the Trump base for the release of something incriminating.  Giuliani might know that a damaging indictment or other some such Mueller reveal is imminent, so who knows, maybe the Buzzfeed story isn’t that far off base.

The Shutdown Saga:  On Friday, Trump dramatically announced that he would make a major statement on the Trump Shutdown on Saturday.  As promised, after participating at a naturalization ceremony, a too cute “moment” intended to soften his hardline image, Trump announced that his team, including son in law Kushner, VP Pence and Senate Leader McConnell had negotiated a solution to the shutdown. Notably, no members of Democratic leadership were involved in any of those so called “negotiations.”  The Trump “solution” involves  three years of deportation protection for some Dreamers and some other immigrants in exchange for $5.7 billion in wall, or what he is now calling barrier, funding.  Democrats rejected his proposal before he even uttered a word, pointing out that the only reason that the status of the DACA kids and the other immigrants, who had previously had Temporary Protected Status, is in jeopardy is because Trump had put them in danger of deportation in the first place. Moreover with the Supreme Court indicating late last week  that it doesn’t plan to take up any cases related to the DACA program during its next session the Dreamers have de facto protection for now anyway.  Standing firmly together, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer continue to assert that they won’t negotiate any deal until Trump first opens the government.  Notably at no time during his Saturday speech did Trump express sympathy for the 800,000 government workers going without paychecks or the countless other contractors and small business owners effected by the shutdown.  Nancy and Chuck aren’t the only two rejecting Trump’s plan, a number of the more right wing members of the Senate as well as the absurdly influential Ann Coulter reject any concession to the Dreamers.  To that end Trump made it clear that his three year extension is just that, it does not include any pathway to citizenship.  As the weekend progressed it became clear that Nancy and Chuck aren’t standing alone, most if not all of their coalition, are rejecting Trump’s proposal so Trump tweet threatened “Be Careful Nancy,” saying though he had no plans to start deporting any of the effected immigrants right now, her reluctance to play ball could result in him changing his mind.  Congress is closed today in commemoration of Martin Luther King Day but tomorrow Senate Leader McConnell is expected to introduce legislation that includes Trump’s proposal as well as some additional sweeteners intended to pry a few Democrats away from Schumer’s block.  At this point, no one expects that any Democrats will sign on, even Senators Manchin and Coons, who are both thought to be the Republicans first targets are unlikely to budge and unless he can keep all of his Republicans in line and add seven Democrats, McConnell’s legislation will fall flat.  That said, it may be an opening gambit, signaling that McConnell is ready to start some real negotiations, this time with actual Democrats.  To the extent he does, he really should invite Nancy and Chuck to the table.  Negotiating with Pence and Kushner alone just doesn’t cut it.  As to Martin Luther King, sent out on the Sunday news show circuit to push Trump’s plan, VP Pence likened Trump to MLK actually quoting a section of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech saying “now is the time to  make real the promises of democracy” to justify the building of his wall.  Suffice it to say, that didn’t go over as planned. Notably neither Trump or Pence are expected to show up at any MLK Day events.  However, Senator Kamala Harris is making the most of the day.  As expected, this morning she announced that she is running for president.  

Other News:  Though it might have gotten lost among all the “Buzz” late last week it was revealed that the Department of Homeland Security was separating children from their parents long before anyone realized what they were up to and it appears that few if any of the children who were separated early on have been reunited with their families.  Oregon Senator Merkley who has remained laser focused on this issue has asked FBI Director Wray to open an investigation into Homeland Security Nielsen for perjury, citing her statements before Congress that the administration did not have the child separation policy that it clearly had.  That investigation probably won’t happen but Nielsen should expect to get torn to pieces during her next visit to the House. Trump plans to meet with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un again in February reportedly in Viet Nam, possibly in response to the lovely letters that he’s received from the authoritarian leader. Maybe they will talk about the advances that North Korea has made in its nuclear program since their last meeting. Perhaps, Trump will offer up South Korea, anything to distract from events at home.